Facebook's SolidWorks models of hardware they've designed will be even more valuable to designers and engineers in the coming weeks as more parts and assemblies are released

In a recent announcement from Facebook, they announced a move to become more transparent and more "open". For those of you who don't follow the "open source" movement, its a philosophy based on the idea that by opening up your intellectual property to others instead of keeping it private, and proprietary, your own products or services your company delivers will improve because of the efforts of others to adopt, embrace, extend and improve that intellectual property. And SolidWorks plays a large role in this initiative. Read on.

Open source started with the software industry, but the concept has extended to all industries in the past several years, in fact at SolidWorks World 2011 in San Antonio, one of the keynote speakers was the founder of Local Motors, a company that builds custom designed automobiles based on the open source model.

The design of the car is a collaborative, open source, 3D based process in which users submit designs via SolidWorks models. All models developed as part of the project are available for download both during the design process and once the design is complete.

Today there's a wealth of software available based on the open source ideal including OpenOffice, LibreOffice, SugarCRM, Joomla and a wealth of other open source software technologies.

Well now add Facebook to that list. Over the last couple of days Facebook announced and launched a new website and program where they have agreed to make available their intellectual properties for others to view, incorporate in their own products and services and most likely improve upon those designs.

What does this announcement have to do with designers, engineers, manufacturerers and machinists? Well, as luck would have it, their models were originally designed using SolidWorks and they've released their computer hardware parts and assemblies as SLDPRT and SLDASM files available for free to download and incorporate in your own designs or improve upon the design!

Now we've taken a look at several of the files and we're in the process of advising them of a better strategy to save out some of their files as we've discovered a few assemblies that don't include the associated parts, so we're confident their SolidWorks models will be even more valuable to designers and engineers in the coming weeks as more parts and assemblies are released.

With that said, we're pleased to recognize Facebook's use of SolidWorks (but not surprised, after all they know what our customers already know, SolidWorks is absolutely the best 3D CAD, no, the best CAD solution period, on the market).

To learn more about Facebook's Open Compute Project visit their website at http://opencompute.org/ and to learn more about SolidWorks, request a demonstration, for pricing or for more information contact MLC CAD Systems at 800-364-1652 by phone, by email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or contact your local MLC CAD Systems office.